


just to feel like we’re alright

by isoneph



Category: I.O.I (Band), Weki Meki (Band), 우주소녀 | Cosmic Girls | WJSN
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Sexual Content, a poor guess at college life, and also soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 16:09:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13275087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoneph/pseuds/isoneph
Summary: Nothing in this world could make Yeonjung feel totally right about the topic of soulmates, except Doyeon.





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> an idea i had just randomly took on a life of its own and dragged me around and demanded that i finish it. thanks for reading and yes doyeonjung is the superior ship!
> 
> twt: @cosmicfiavor

_The mark's on top of Yeonjung's left shoulder. It's a mess of asterisk-like stars, encroached by a spiral that looked like fate gave up on drawing it halfway through and slashed the whole thing instead. Yeonjung isn't in the slightest interested by her own soulmark. It's not the most ridiculous, intricate or even the most good-looking as soulmarks could be, in her opinion._  
  
_It's nothing like Heehyun and Chaeyeon's black bands tangled on their forearms, nothing like Jieqiong's dramatic bloom of hexagons on her collarbone, it's not even like Sejeong's simple em-dash on her ankle._  
  
_Yeonjung had asked her about it, after Sejeong'd flopped on her bed with her feet hanging off, leggings rolled up slightly. The girl's mark was a perfect, straight fine line running parallel to her shin._  
  
_"How do you know who has it and who's faking it?"_  
  
_"You don't," Sejeong replied in earnest, after a moment of scrolling through Insta. "It's not like soulmates are perfect- no one can be."_  
  
_Yeonjung's recently found the idea of soulmates to be too idealistic to be true- and it seems to be more and more common nowadays for people to just marry who they feel is right, who they love even if the universe declares their love inferior to the one crafted by them. She's heard horror stories of people all over the world spending their lives in miserable perpetuity trying to find their better halves, and that bond, she feels, is too constricting, too binding to be any sort of beautiful._  
  
_The TV in the commons is blaring as she walks past it. "Channel 3's nightly feature: do soulmate relationships really fare better than those formed by choice?"_  
  
_Yeonjung doesn't know, really. Everyone, all cultures and societies of the world had all tried their best to explain the soulmark - and failed, to some extent. But her parents didn't share many of the same views that tradition had on soulmates. They'd always tell her that they'd support their daughter no matter the outcome of fate. And so she'd considered herself very, very lucky._  
  
_Sometimes a classmate or same-age friend would compliment the beauty of her soulmark, compliment on how artsy or symbolic it was._  
  
_"It's about as artsy as some kindergartener's little scribble," Yeonjung snorted, as Sejeong pretended to look hurt over her choice of words. And honestly, it meant the same amount to her as a little kid's crayon artwork. Who even th-_

  
  
“You know, the shower works better if you're in it.”  
  
Jesus, her head hurts. She cracks her eyes open momentarily, and she sees Sejeong's half-worried expression from the other side of the bathroom. “Have a nice nap?”  
  
“I fell asleep? Not even in the shower?”  
  
Sejeong shakes her head, flips the spatula she's holding in her hand. Her roommate turns to head back to the kitchen. “Have any weird dreams?”  
  
Yeonjung stands up, sleepily, and turns off the water. “Yeah, I guess.” When Sejeong closes the door, the younger girl goes to the mirror, taking in her disheveled appearance. They're leaving for the campus Welcome Back bonfire in half an hour, and she's become something of a legend for oversleeping and then getting ready in literally no time.  
  
She shakes her head, trying to clear her mind. And just to make sure, she glances at the top of her shoulder where her soulmark, where her little galaxy of stars is.  
  
“Just some _really_ weird thoughts, actually,” Yeonjung mutters.

 

✱

 

  
Yeonjung gets along all right at social events. She doesn't hate them by any means, but when you're introduced to a friend of a friend and left alone, it turns into something kind of confusing and unenjoyable.  
  
In the middle of the street, people are screaming and throwing their empty beer bottles into the makeshift effigy of the rival school's poor mascot. Generally Yeonjung isn't one to complain about the noise level (she's usually the one _being_ overly loud), but it's quickly approaching obnoxious.  
  
“Sorry, excuse me.” She unapologetically elbows past a few freshmen, getting a few dirty looks as she makes her way to the back by the cars. Yeonjung eventually finds Chungha, an upperclassman in her Vocal Studies class, past the throng of the crowd, over the yelling and people blasting their own music on their speakers. She's sitting cross-legged in the truck bed of someone's car, next to Minhyun, a member of the school's soccer team. Chungha's eyes light up when she spots the younger girl.  
  
“Ohmygod, hey Yeonjungie!”  
  
Yeonjung pulls her scarf down to greet her. “Hi unnie, have you seen Sejeong unnie around here?”  
  
Chungha pauses. “Uh, she was here a few – no, wait. I think she already left with someone to the Kappa Kappa Tau girls' house.”  
  
Yeonjung curses inwardly. She didn't know that many people who went to the bonfire, and the one girl she did ditched her in the middle of it. “Do you know how to get there?”  
  
“It's on the main residential street – hey, Doyeon! Doyeon-ah!” Chungha gestures for a tall girl to come to her. “Doyeon can show you where it is, she's in KKT after all. Is that okay?”  
  
Doyeon checks the time before putting her phone in her pocket. “Sure, I was gonna go home soon anyways.”  
  
Yeonjung sizes up Doyeon quickly. Cheer team hoodie, messy shoulder-length hair, really tall. Gorgeous.  
  
_Gorgeous? Snap out of it, ack._  
  
The sorority girl does the same to Yeonjung, her glance fleeting but firm. “Hi. Need me to show you where your friend is?”  
  
“Would be great, yeah.”

  
  
Most of the walk is in silence. As they get farther down the street, the sounds of the bonfire fade away, replaced with the solitary sounds of Doyeon's boots and Yeonjung's sneakers hitting the pavement.  
  
“You're Yoo Yeonjung, right? Vocal arts major?” Doyeon breaks the silence first.  
  
Yeonjung nods in response. Doyeon shrugs, pausing to kick a rock as they walk. “Sejeong unnie talks a lot about you in the ensemble. You're really good from what she says about you.”  
  
“Thanks.” Yeonjung wants to say something else, but she keeps her mouth shut and her gaze on the ground in front of them. “How do you know Sejeong unnie?”  
  
“We went to the same high school. She was a junior when I was a freshman. You?”  
  
“Vocal classes, and she's my roommate.”  
  
The conversation is admittedly dry, and they say no more as the sorority and fraternity houses come into view on the residential street. Doyeon points to the farthest one, nestled in the corner of the cul-de-sac. “That's KKT. Home sweet home, for me, anyways.”  
  
From a far distance away, Yeonjung can see Sejeong facing Kim Nayoung, a senior, on the porch. The lights are on behind the drawn blinds, and there's a dull thrum of activity inside. As she gets closer, though, she can hear how their voices are raised, clearly arguing with each other. The cheerleader stops in the middle of the path awkwardly.  
  
“Come back later?” Doyeon starts to backtrack, but Yeonjung hushes her and keeps walking.  
  
“Nah.” Admittedly Yeonjung feels weird, but it's not from Sejeong and Nayoung's fighting, it's something else she can't put her finger on. She walks up the steps, Doyeon in tow.  
  
“-dickhead,” Sejeong finishes, tearing her focus away from the senior, who's standing with her arms crossed and a sour expression on her face. “What do you two want?”  
  
Yeonjung purses her lips. “I was trying to find you.” Doyeon passes behind Nayoung stiffly, walking past her to get into the house. Her hand is on the doorknob though, waiting for the girls to finish their conversation before leaving.  
  
“Good, then,” Sejeong says, a sickly sweet grimace of an expression plastered on her face. “I'm just gonna go now. Think about what I said, Nayoung.” She turns sharply on her heel, walking down the driveway. Yeonjung spares a glance at Nayoung, who looks pained, and shoots an apologetic look to Doyeon. The latter girl shrugs.  
  
“Nice meeting you, Yeonjung.”  
  
“Bye,” she says, before sprinting to meet up with Sejeong, who's already two houses down. The older girl doesn't even turn her head to look at Yeonjung, just keeps walking briskly.  
  
“What was that ab-”  
  
“Don't talk about it, I don't want to talk about it,” Sejeong cuts her off, waving her hand in a dismissive action. “Don't want to talk about _her_.”  
  
Yeonjung is thankful for their uneventful walk back home, because she still feels _weird_ after meeting Doyeon.  
  
But more importantly, she decides that she isn't opposed to it.

 

✱

  
“Something bothering you?”  
  
She's been holed up in the library for the past two hours, stuck on one problem for her psychology class. Yeonjung looks up at the familiar voice.  
  
“Um, hey Doyeon.”  
  
The cheerleader sits down beside her, dropping her bookbag uncaringly next to the foot of the stool. “I'm just gonna say it – did I ever get your number?”  
  
Yeonjung hesitantly accepts Doyeon's phone when it's thrust into her hands, punches in her contact slowly. She makes sure to subtly analyze her face when she's doing it, but Doyeon is either a master at pulling a poker face, or truly detached.  
  
“Don't send me crappy memes, I get those enough from Sohye.”  
  
“No promises,” Doyeon chirps, putting her phone in the pocket of her coat. “I think that agreement would be broken in like, a week anyways.”  
  
Yeonjung's tempted to roll her eyes out of habit, but holds back, clicking the end of her highlighter against her workbook instead. “Don't you have, like, practice or something?” Doyeon pulls out her laptop and her binder, plops them down on the counter.  
  
“I actually, like, attend classes. I have English homework.”  
  
Yeonjung notices the subtle dig at her vernacular, notices that she doesn't mind it as much as she usually would.  
  
_What? Ugh._  
  
Admittedly, not much psych or English homework gets done that afternoon. Instead they fill it with mindless chatter, petty debates and gossip (mostly on Doyeon's part, but Yeonjung won't lie and say she didn't indulge herself) and mango shaved ice from the canteen. It would be pretty hopeless to say that she isn't making any new friends this year, when really they end up ditching studying for hanging out more often than she'd expected.  
  
  
_Ugh._

 

✱

 

  
  
Yeonjung puts down the biology textbook, leans back in her chair and stretches her arms. Of course, she reaches out for her phone, like any other reasonable human being would.  
  
_00:21_  
_7 min - Kim Doyeon: hey fuck face, got a second?_  
  
It's kind of funny how they've transcended the barrier between “handle with care” friendship, heading into “expletive nickname” territory almost immediately. Yeonjung feels a smile coming on - she hates it, almost, because Doyeon really knows what to say and how she means it, even if it's through calling her a fuck face.  
  
00:23  
_just now - uyj_s: maybe hoe. y?_  
  
00:23  
_just now - Kim Doyeon: need to ask you something_  
_just now - Kim Doyeon: are you a soulmate kinda girl?_  
  
Yeonjung's eyes widen, and she snaps back from her tilted position in her chair. The question’s so sudden, and Doyeon doesn't seem the type to ask this, and yet...  
  
00:26  
_1 min - uyj_s: ummmmm...._  
  
Tell the truth?  
  
_just now - uyj_s: not really?_  
  
The reply is instantanous.  
  
00:27  
_just now - Kim Doyeon: good. me either_  
  
  
Yeonjung just doesn't know how to respond, so she leaves it at that. She doesn't care for having one because soulmate relationships aren't a fully furnished house, they aren't something you can just drop into and glide on. Just like anything else, you have to work for them and put in effort to make them happen. And at the end of the day, what was so special about that? Who cared about what fate wanted?  
  
Overrated. Yeah, they're overrated.  
  
Overrated is also the word Sejeong uses to describe Kim Nayoung to her, ranting as they walk across residential halls to their own after hours. Points including:  
  
“And, like,” Sejeong says, voice dripping with sarcasm, “don't you have a calc lecture to go to? Why are you even in that class if you're a law major?”  
  
“I bet you have a track meet right now, don't bother me again texting me for my study guide.”  
  
“Can you go bother someone else? Jesus Christ, Nayoung, you know I hate you and you hate me right back.”  
  
Yeonjung stays quiet over all the Nayoung talk, just opens her mouth whenever she agrees with Sejeong, but otherwise lets her do her thing. She doesn't know much about Nayoung, but she has a prickling feeling that Sejeong cares more about this girl than she lets on, for better or for worse.  
  
Obviously.  
  
“I swear to god, Yeonjung, I'm so done with her. At this point I get sick when I hear her name.” Sejeong turns the corner sharply, and Yeonjung struggles to keep up.  
  
“I, um, don't doubt that.” Yeonjung stifles a laugh.  
  
Sejeong gives her a pointed look. “Don’t doubt? Can't you relate more to this, with your whole Doyeon thing?”  
  
Her suppressed laughing turns into some kind of fit. “My whole Doyeon _what?_ ”  
  
“You're so ridiculously whipped for her, it's gross. It's written all over your face with all the things you do for her.”  
  
“I don't do anything.” Yeonjung rolls her eyes, putting her notebook into her bag. “You're reaching.”  
  
“You go on study dates with her every single week.” Sejeong counters, looking like she doesn't believe Yeonjung at all. “I use the term _study_ very loosely.”  
  
“We have a lot of classes together.”  
  
“Okay, fine. But giving her your choir jacket? That's the most whipped thing ever.”  
  
“She forgot hers, and those cheer team jackets aren't even proper clothing.”  
  
“It has your name on it.”  
  
“So what?”  
  
“Whipped. You literally gave a girl your clothes. Bet she hasn't given it back.”  
  
“Just because she hasn't!-”  
  
“Helping her move Eunwoo's bed onto the lawn in the middle of the night just because she asked you to?”  
  
“Her reaction when she woke up was funny and worth it. Sometimes Dumbass Doyeon has good ideas.” Yeonjung can’t offer many more eye rolls. “Can’t I have other friendships?”  
  
“Whatever you say.” Sejeong cocks an eyebrow. “We all see it, you know. I think Jieqiong's been posting stalker pictures of you and her and captioning them with stupid shit.”  
  
“Jieqiong is insane.”  
  
“Chungha's been placing bets on who's gonna ask who out first.”  
  
“Then she's insane too. And wasting her money because no one's asking anyone out.”  
  
“Sometimes the insane have sober thoughts.”  
  
“What's that even supposed to mean?”  
  
“It's supposed to mean that you should get with her. Like, now.”  
  
Yeonjung glares at Sejeong, shifting the weight of her bookbag as they cross the commons. “You're making things up, I promise. Am I still not allowed to have other friends?”  
  
“Us friends are here to remind you to stop drooling whenever Doyeon's shirt rides up when you watch her at practice.”  
  
“Ugh, fuck you too.”  
  
“Fuck _me_? Are you sure that’s who you want?”

 

✱

 

  
Yeonjung can't figure out what's up when Doyeon gives her a single white rose, it's taped on the door with a note: _here ya go fuck face <3 _  
  
It doesn't need to be signed, and Yeonjung hates how she knows it's Doyeon because of her handwriting and the derogatory nickname that isn't because it's from Doyeon.  
  
She figures it outsoon enough - the rose came from one of many in a bouquet that Park Jihoon gifted her as a courtship offer. Doyeon had wrinkled her nose at the gift, she told Yeonjung on one of their many “study dates” that she wasn't keen on him whatsoever. Doyeon's gaze had drilled right into her, making her heart play ping-pong within her rib cage.  
  
And she doesn't know why she feels disappointed in the first place, knowing that it wasn't a gift from Doyeon like _that_. And she doesn't know why she'd even want it to be.  
  
_Ugh._


	2. ii

To tell the truth, Yeonjung wasn't keen on soulmates for one reason, and that reason started and ended with one name: Chu Sojung.  
  
Sojung made her feel _guilty_ of something she didn't even know could exist in the first place. Her discussion leader in Physics 101 as a freshman, Sojung had passed right through the TA line and into her life as someone who'd just... stick.  
  
And the first time they kissed was an accident.  
  
A voluntary accident, one that happened when the professor was out sick and Sojung'd filled in for him as best she could during office hours. Yeonjung was the only one who came to the appointment that afternoon.  
  
  
“Who knew,” Sojung's voice echoed around the little room. “You don't think so?”  
  
“No,” Yeonjung replied, and she giggled a little when Sojung got flustered, cheeks turning pink, approaching the same shade as her blouse. And when Yeonjung mentioned so, it turned into flirting.  
  
Ugh, Yoo Yeonjung was _not_ a flirt. She _did not_ flirt with anyone, she was too proud and too clueless and really too dumb to know how flirt with people. And here she was, nineteen and flirting with her TA like someone who was trying to get a date.  
  
Yeonjung got something more than a date.  
  
“Do you really think I'm a flirt?”  
  
“Did you try?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Guess you're a natural, then.”  
  
Sojung's gaze was focused on her lips and then before she knew what she was doing, Yeonjung had gotten up out of her seat and sat down. In Sojung's lap.  
  
“Is this flirting now, unnie?”  
  
She probably looked incredulously cocky. Yeonjung probably also looked a damn fool, but she didn't feel like one then. In fact, she felt _good_ for being the reason behind Sojung's acute blush and stuttering when normally she was effortlessly cool – in front of the class or not.  
  
“I-it's risky... for sure.” Sojung put an arm around Yeonjung's waist, and the younger girl shivered at the sudden contact, suddenly losing the high of confidence from the moves she'd made. But those hard feelings were there, they'd been there and were threatening to burst ever since Sojung'd stepped foot in the classroom.  
  
Was it... could it be the soulmate bond?  
  
Sojung's eyes were closed. She was leaning in, in a silent request for something that made Yeonjung burn up at the tips of her ears and her face. She was young, she was dumb, and unfortunately she knew nothing about what a relationship would feel like.  
  
So she closed her eyes and leaned in too.  
  
Their lips brushed for the first time and firecrackers fizzled and went off in Yeonjung's mind, plain and simple but at the same time just _not_. That feeling of a dynamite fuse being lit would never leave her, and little did she know, the taste of Sojung wouldn't leave her alone either.  
  
Their thing progresses. Soon Yeonjung's lying to Soobin about being out and coming home late on Monday afternoons because she's really struggling with the unit, then the one after that and after that. Thankfully her roommate doesn't inquire further because the content Yeonjung should be talking about to Sojung should be about the lessons she's giving.  
  
Not making out with her in supply closets like some kind of messy high schooler, the kind she never was and never could be. Not losing herself in a way that only scared her. Not having the kind of infatuation that felt all too much like being cast out on a string like a puppet, with her emotions being the puppetmaster.  
  
Sojung snapped something inside of Yeonjung to attention. Soon they fell, farther and farther into the rabbit hole and Yeonjung knew, like the mindless, oblivious one she was, so confidently that Sojung was her soulmate even without seeing the mark. She goes to her apartment for the first and last time too, and she's desperate when Sojung kisses off her lipstick at the front door.  
  
They're in the front hall when Yeonjung breaks apart from the kiss.  
  
“Wait,” she pants, looking into Sojung's dark eyes and shuddering slightly because she knows that what they have with each other will forever be different after this. For better or for worse.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
Yeonjung breaks eye contact first and fists the top of her shirt, bra strap and all, tugs it down just enough for Sojung to see her little galaxy on her shoulder. It's what binds them together, after all, Yeonjung's sure of it. But instead, something unreadable flashes in Sojung's stare for a second, and then it's gone again.  
  
“I need to tell you something.” Sojung shifts, and it becomes suddenly apparent that she's _nervous,_ a concept so foreign to Yeonjung that she's actually never seen the older woman like this.  
  
"Soulmates are bullshit," she eventually declares, breaking the silence between them. "Basically tells you that everyone in your life between you and them is second rate. I can't agree with that." The blonde takes two steps toward the younger girl.  
  
She and Yeonjung are literally six inches apart from each other, and she's looking into her eyes.  
  
_Blame it on the heat of the moment._  
  
Yeonjung's mouth is dry, but she responds to Sojung's touch – the way she traces along her jaw with her fingertips. "Haven't you ever wanted someone – wanted them so much but finding your soulmate was more important?"  
  
"Yeah," Sojung says, eyes still focused on the younger girl's face- her discussion leader is studying Yeonjung almost.... analytically. “You mean someone like you?”  
  
"I don't know," Yeonjung whispers, and finally she sees that Sojung's eyes are closed. She's expecting something.  
  
_I don't know._  
  
Sojung's lips feel right against her own, rough and familiar, but it's just what she needs. Here Yeonjung doesn't need to find comfort, she just needs to find what she likes. For the remainder of the night she lets herself enjoy the company of someone else. Finally, she's worrying about something else, throwing what she was taught to know to the wind. She falls on her back onto Sojung's bed, half naked and with the older girl on top of her because that's what she likes, Sojung's teeth marking her neck and those little noises she makes when Yeonjung slots her thigh between Sojung's legs in the darkness.  
  
Because at the end of it all, isn't it all about what she likes?  
  
All she knows, all she leaves with in the morning is that she got to see Sojung's soulmark, a series of three straight lines wrapping around her right hipbone. Nothing close to her little galaxy.  
  
Long after Sojung turns her back to Yeonjung in the darkness, easily falling asleep after the act, the latter's memory runs back to a high-profile drunk driving case from a year or two ago.

 

  
  
Yeonjung had been moving out of her dorm room for the summer, and in her haste, had asked her then-roommate Soobin to meet her in the commons to help her find a couple of boxes. To the several people in the commons lounge in the evening, a breaking news announcement distracted them all for a brief moment, Yeonjung included.  
  
_"Live at 11 PM, a freeway accident which has injured over 20. One remains in critical condition in the ICU. The driver is suspected to have been drunk at the time of the accident, as witnesses say they saw the car swerving erratically between lanes before colliding with the barrier."_  
  
The commentary cuts to photos of the wreck, an aerial view of a highway where a black SUV lay smoking, rammed head-on into the concrete divider. Around the site are the fire trucks, ambulances, and spotlight of a news helicopter overhead. That's when Soobin texts her and tells Yeonjung that she's outside with one of the missing boxes, and she tears her attention away from the screen.  
  
She forgets about the thing on the news, until one day months later when she's checking her SNS, and on the front page of a site is an article on the aftermath of the accident. Her curiosity piques, and she skims through it quickly. _Blood alcohol level of 0.13, 20 years minimum sentence in prison, 23 injured, 1 dead._  
  
One dead. Yeonjung feels revulsion burn up in her gut, feels pity for the family.  
  
Sometimes, families of victims will allow the media to reveal their loved one's soul mark, just to give closure to the public and to tell the unlucky individual, whoever it might be, to stop looking or just to not start at all.  
  
_Kim Hyunjung, 22, is confirmed to be the only death. Her family has allowed the disclosure of her soul mark. Official artist’s rendition below:_  
  
Yeonjung flits over the attached picture of the smiling face of the black-haired girl, and down to the official image of the soulmark: three black lines wrapping neatly around the right hipbone.  
  
It's not like that image stayed with her in particular, but the combination of her discussion leader's disapproval of soulmates and the victim's unique soulmark brought it back up. Did she know? Yeonjung couldn't say for sure, but surely bringing it up at all would only hurt Sojung more, instill a little bit more hate in her. She knew she had no right to do that, so all she did was keep Sojung's number like the older girl asked her to, the one scrawled out on a scrap of paper, left on the nightstand.  
  
It's never used, though- right after the end of the year and her graduation, Sojung accepts a teaching job on the opposite side of the country and all but erases herself from Yeonjung's mind.  
  
And ironically, she becomes just three black lines and wary, forlorn anger in Yeonjung's mind from then on. She helps Yeonjung decide that it's not worth it, not ever worth it.  


 

✱

 

She's barely gotten out of the boba place, waving to Doyeon and experiencing the usual _ugh_ -inducing heart flutters when she checks her phone. Tons of missed messages from Sejeong. Not good. But she meets with Sejeong in the parking lot as soon as she can, and when she swings the door open and sits in the passenger seat of the girl's car, she knows something is wrong. The older girl's eyes are red and puffy and her cheeks are tear-stained.  
  
“Oh my god, Sejeong, I-”  
  
“Don't,” she starts, and she has the hoarse voice of someone who's been crying for longer than they should have been. “It's not your fault.”  
  
“I really thought it was her,” Sejeong groans, closing her eyes and leaning her head on the glass of the driver's side window. “Is that why I let her play me for so long?”  
  
“Who-” Yeonjung cuts herself off immediately, because she knows exactly who Sejeong is talking about, it's the only person who she could be referring to at all. The older girl nods weakly.  
  
“Nayoung has that diagonal web looking thing on her upper arm, and even though I have this straight line on my ankle, I tried talking myself out of it. I tried telling myself that I didn't feel anything for her, I hated her, and it worked for a while before it all fell apart. Today actually.” Sejeong sniffles, staring miserably at the steering wheel. “I kind of lost it when she told me that she was only holding it together for me because she had her soulmate already, and it came off as her just...feeling sorry for me.”  
  
“She... didn't have the heart to stop leading you on?”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“Why wouldn't she-”  
  
“I don't know,” Sejeong blurts out. I cried in front of her for like, five minutes and all she did was pat me on the back when I was done.”  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Yeonjung snorts. “You fessed up your life and your soulmark for her and she was like that?”  
  
“Dry as fuck, as usual.”  
  
“Tell me about it.”  
  
They sit in silence for a while, watching the streetlights outside through the gaps in the concrete in the parking garage. Sejeong turns to her after a minute, breathing normally now without hiccups. “Yeonjungie?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I-I just.. just be careful? Know when you're playing yourself.”  
  
“Sounds dirty.”  
  
Sejeong stifles a laugh, wipes her last tears away. “I'm serious this time, okay? Don't go as far as I did. Whoever it is, figure out if they're worth your time and all those thoughts.”  
  
  
  
  
It starts slowly at first. It seems almost natural, that they'd drift apart after a while. Doyeon eventually ceases to exist in her mind, and she'd like the vice versa to happen too. Their study dates happen less and less, until the last one weeks ago where they sat in silence for a few minutes before Doyeon got up and left.  
  
Yeonjung feels lonely. More so than before she'd met anyone in school, when she first moved here and knew nobody.  
  
She fills her time with her work instead. Yeonjung blows off Sejeong's offers to go out, throwing herself into her studies and just ignoring. Ignoring what, exactly? She doesn't know yet, but it's not a someone. It's a something, it's a feeling she's so done with having, for the last few years at least.  
  
She's tired of feeling so helpless, so dependent on other people. Yeonjung's tried so hard, learned how to stand on her own, but she hates the part within herself that just craves company.  
  
Yeonjung is clingy at the bare minimum, but it goes to a whole new extreme when those ugh feelings are added on top of it. And she has to make a conscious effort to detach herself every single time. No. It wouldn't be the same way it used to with her high school flings, the guys and girls who'd break her heart over text and call her clingy like that. Nothing would end the same way, the same way that left her humiliated and broken for weeks.  
  
That's another thing. Yeonjung was quick to give her heart out to those who wanted it. And she's so tired of it: gullible heart, her need for independence being so gullible itself.  
  
And maybe she goes too far one day.  
  
Jinsook is a short, blonde cheerleader on the performance squad, who looks like a fox and acts the part too - keen, mischievous, too smart for her own good.  
  
(It doesn't help that Jinsook shimmies out of her cheer jacket the same way that makes Yeonjung give up hers. It doesn't matter anyways, soon.)  
  
They stumble out of the pub, hardly buzzed, into Yeoreum's car. Yeonjung notices the older girl's wandering hands and fleeting stares and lets herself believe that she doesn't need anyone else in this moment. Tonight, she's out to prove herself, _to prove to herself_ that she doesn't need those feelings anymore.  
  
Yeoreum must sense how desperate Yeonjung feels for that validation right now, because she breaks the kiss and sits upright, panting heavily.  
  
“Jesus – Yeonjung, are you sure you want to do this?” Yeoreum's eyes are wide, pupils blown even with the nearly pitch black darkness.  
  
_No, I never learn. No, I don't really know what I want. No, I'm not sure if I want to do this but I'm sure us fucking will take my mind off it long enough._  
  
Who knew a late-night coincidence could lead to fucking in the backseat of Yeoreum's Escalade?  
  
“Yes,” Yeonjung snaps, hoping that the underlying irritation isn't evident in her voice as she leans in again for another kiss. “I'm sure.”  
  
The older girl frowns, but complies and lets Yeonjung capture her lips again. Yeonjung deftly slides a hand into Yeoreum's panties, eliciting a gasp from the latter.  
  
_“Ah,”_ Yeoreum groans, as her fingers slip through to her heat. “I'm- oh, wow Yeonjung.” The older girl grips the headrest behind her, leaving crescent indents in the black leather. It's not satisfying, though - the little whimpers and moans that Yeonjung hears only makes her head hurt more with the thought.  
  
Yeoreum is rocking her hips in time to the thrusts of Yeonjung's fingers, as the two make out to burn time. It's a messy experience, tongue in places it shouldn't be, Yeoreum's hands fisting themselves in Yeonjung's already tangled hair, and it's so imperfect and gross but she needs more of it, enough to drown in.  
  
It should be enough. But it isn't and when Yeoreum's movements become sloppy and she cries out, tightening around Yeonjung's fingers, Yeonjung feels her heart sink amongst all the arousal.  
  
“Lay back,” Yeoreum rasps, finally slipping her underwear off her ankles. “Let me, baby.”  
  
The pet name makes her shudder, but if it fell from another certain someone else's lips, it would have made her melt right then and there. Yeonjung switches positions, laying across the seats, as she hurriedly peels off her leggings. There's the shuffling noise of skin on skin on fabric as Yeoreum's deft hands strip Yeonjung of her panties, marking kisses on her hipbones.  
  
_Fuck..._  
  
She's never prepared for this, not ever, even when the two girls before Yeoreum liked to do the same thing. But when she finally seeks contact with the older girl's tongue, she groans and her hips jerk up.  
  
“Oh god,” Yeonjung moans, hips rising up to meet Yeoreum's mouth and pumping fingers. She's thankful for the darkness, because it's the one thing shrouding her closed eyes. Yeoreum gives a short giggle, and she feels it resonate throughout her body.  
  
Yeonjung's eyes are closed because she's thinking about another cheerleader's mouth on her, another head between her legs, another anything, really. And she hates herself for it so much because _isn't this what she likes?_  
  
She feels herself getting closer and closer to the edge, Yeoreum licks broad stripes and curls her fingers and that does nothing to help delay her release. A name begins to form on the tip of her tongue, and her eyes snap open as she bites it to stop that name from coming out.  
  
Yeonjung's thrown headfirst into a pool of empty nothingness, so white hot and almost painful as she comes, rides out her wave with that one person in mind the whole time. That one person touching her, roaming her body with their hands, that one person who'd probably have pretty moans and whimpers and look beautiful with their head thrown back.

 

  
✱

 

  
No more description's needed for anyone to guess that she's been thinking of Doyeon lately. (Does she hate it? Maybe.)  
  
She's sure that she hates her at this point - honestly, Yeonjung doesn't know why she's made friends with Doyeon, the younger girl is perfect and effortlessly cool in ways Yeonjung could never be. Maybe she's green with jealousy, maybe she's just selfish.  
  
Maybe she’s afraid of owning up to what she feels. Maybe she’s afraid of letting go of what she used to think, because this _something_ is new and it scares Yeonjung in a way that's new too.  
  
Maybe she has to own up to her soulmate and stop focusing on hating. On ignoring. Yeonjung barely manages to turn her desk lamp off, fumbling with the cord, before passing out on top of her assignments.  
  
Because maybe, today isn’t that day.  
  
_Ugh._


	3. iii

It's 3 AM, but Yeonjung knows more about Doyeon than she'd like to admit. It's really shitty of her to promise her anything less than an apology, so she goes to the roof.  
  
Yeonjung takes the keys, because at this hour Sejeong won’t mind. Once she makes it down the residential street, she’s greeted at the door by a half-asleep Han Hyeri, who gives her a fatigued one-over and lets her get up to the sorority’s balcony.  
  
Her boots make a clunking sound against the creaky wood of the steps, so when she pushes the access door open, Doyeon's already looking at her, leaning against the opposite concrete wall.  
  
Doyeon puts away her phone and crosses her arms. "I'm not going to ask you why you're here."  
  
"I-" she starts, but Yeonjung stops mid-thought. Maybe she shouldn't have opened her mouth after all. She was just waiting for the universe to give her one bitch-slap, one more thing for her to hate, which is so ironic given that she just wants the exact opposite of that from the world.  
  
"I'm sorry." But Doyeon doesn't make a sound, doesn't say anything, just stares straight ahead at the electric generator in front of them. It scares Yeonjung because at this point it could be over, what little of their friendship they have left, nothing to salvage if what they've both been thinking was right.  
  
"Okay," Doyeon mumbles, her voice monotone and drained. "Whatever, Yeonjung." She shifts, sits up with her back straight against the concrete. Her jacket slides a little bit off her shoulder.  
  
Top of the shoulder isn't the most common place for a soulmark. But Yeonjung looks anyways, even though she knows she has absolutely no right to.  
  
And the sun is just below the horizon- the sun's a murky orange, the color of the beginning of the end of the night as it peels away from existence. It's not light enough out for her to see the clear picture of what the mark actually could be anyways, she reckons, but Yeonjung's resolve breaks and her eyes drift over the soulmark.  
  
What Yeonjung sees on top of Doyeon's shoulder is a collection of asterisk-like stars, surrounded by a spiral that looked like fate gave up on drawing it halfway through and slashed it in half instead. But the crushing feeling of regret in her gut is so much more powerful than the realization.  
  
“I'm sorry,” Yeonjung repeats, and those words sound so much more shallow than they did the first time. Doyeon just looks at her, emptily, frankly, something so foreign to Yeonjung that it makes her want to cry out.  
  
“Did you really think Jinsook was the type to keep her mouth shut?” Doyeon breaks eye contact first, drawing her knees up to her chest, clasping her arms around. “Everything in the squad gets back around to me.”  
  
“I was lonely,” Yeonjung confesses, feeling more and more pathetic as time goes by, “I was lonely and I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know about you, Doyeon-”  
  
“Are you happy now?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Are you happy with her? Because like, you know, me and her are the exact same thing to you.”  
  
“I don't...”  
  
“Come here.” Yeonjung trudges her feet along the floor. Doyeon straightens, stands up and she doesn't anticipate it, but Doyeon reaches an arm out to her right, grabbing the collar of Yeonjung's shirt. The action is more forceful than she'd expect from Doyeon, but there isn't any malice behind it. The younger girl simply tugs the shirt so that it's in an uncomfortable position, digging into the other side of Yeonjung's neck, exposing the top of her left shoulder.  
  
The expression on her face is the nail in the coffin, physically and metaphorically.  
  
"And it's because of this thing," Doyeon sighs, laced with the weight of a million emotions clouding her mind, she can tell. Grief, being indignant, hurt, mostly. She releases her grip and the older girl stumbles back a step.  
  
“What do you want from me now? Because I don't know,” Yeonjung whispers.  
  
“You know what? I don't know either.”  
  
"Okay," Yeonjung says, getting to her feet and fixing her shirt. She feels the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but turns her back before the other girl can see. "I- I'll be downstairs, or back at the dorms- I'll just be away."  
  
"Good. Then go."  
  
There's no fanfare, no sparks or fluttering feelings out of what she just found out. Nothing but emptiness and fear of what comes next. Because if fate made soulmates, made all of life as they knew it, then it must have been utterly sadistic with the way it decided to design Doyeon and Yeonjung.  
  
Because Doyeon loved her like that, and what Yeonjung did was throw all of it back in her face.  
  
A soulmark isn't an apology – and it won't ever come close to being one. So Yeonjung holds her head high, even if this ruined relationship was her fault: for being scared, for being fearful enough to ignore, even with all the warning signs along the way.

 

✱

  
  
  
Yeonjung sobs unapologetically - and it’s the gross kind of crying, the kind that everyone does only when they’re alone. Or at least when they think they're alone.  
  
“Yeonjung?”  
  
The door is locked, so Sejeong can’t get in, otherwise she’d see the depressing, miserable state her roommate's in. Yeonjung is crumpled on a heap in front of the door inside, and it’s only been a couple minutes but feels like it’s been a couple of hours since The Feeling reared its head and took over her consciousness. Despite all her attempts to drain her thoughts, it’s been on her mind, pushing and pulling buttons and stirring doubts and repressed memories and everything having to do with _her_.  
  
It was fine until it wasn’t, and everything was fine until she remembered that Doyeon had tried to tell her so many times and that she’d remained blind to the truth.  
  
She can hear Sejeong drop down to sitting on the floor in the hallway on the outside, kicking the door gently.  
  
“Yeonjung, I’m not gonna tell you what to do because I can't, but you need to do something.”  
  
Yeonjung stays sniffling in silence, dealing with nothing except looking at the paintings and posters on Sejeong’s side of the room.  
  
“I’m not telling you to date her or hate her or whatever you're trying to get to happen right now. But you need to give her another chance.”  
  
“I threw away all her chances,” Yeonjung croaks, “she’s too good to have even given me any in the first place.”  
  
Sejeong purses her lips. “How do you know that?”  
  
“I-I just know. Because I fucked it all up when I started ignoring her, and when I slept with Jinsook it just all got worse... god, why did I do that?”  
  
“Why did you start ignoring her? I don't get why you'd stop talking to one of your closest friends for no reason.”  
  
Yeonjung sits up, drying her eyes with the cuff of her sweater. “I don't know? She- she started acting all weird to me, all serious and gross and- she gave me a fucking _rose,_ ” she rambles, spilling everything she'd tried to hard to keep together.  
  
“She bought you flowers?” Sejeong asks, surprise apparent in her voice.  
  
“No, oh god, I don't mean it like that,” and Yeonjung shakes her head at how stupid she's been this whole time, because she knows what Doyeon meant by it, and how hard it must have been for the girl to tear down her walls and do something as simple as give her that flower and that note. “It was like, her own way. She wanted to say something but I didn't know what, but it's like...”  
  
“Like...”  
  
“Fuck,” Yeonjung hiccups, “was that her trying to tell me to let her in?”  
  
She can feel Sejeong's confusion from the other side of the door. “How am I supposed to know? I mean, I think a girl taking you out every week is pretty weird, just for a studying friend, and someone like Doyeon doesn't seem like someone who'd be open to that, y'know? Elite social circles and all that with sororities and cheer.”  
  
“I'm so blind, Sejeong,” Yeonjung wails, burying her head in her arms. “Help me.”  
  
“I think you two are equally as dumb, with all these games and screwing around with saying how you like each other. Now I guess it's just a matter of who's gonna say sorry first.”  
  
  
  
It's a tiring few months, but Yeonjung makes it.  
  
She worries a lot, but she gets it out of her system by finishing her senior solo composition, thanks to honey lemon tea and Dawon's accompaniment on piano. She even gets a standing ovation from all 10 of her Level 4 peers in the auditorium when she's finished, and she thinks she's well on her way to her final year in the vocal arts program.  
  
The rest of Yeonjung's third year passes by pretty quickly, too – she'd be lying if she said she didn't take a look at a few extracurricular exchange programs, but shied away because it's pretty fucking scary to go off on her own. She's one of the few that waves Chungha off at the airport, where she plans to finish her final year at an American college.  
  
And she doesn't let Yeonjung forget about her girl problems, either.  
  
“Let me know if you get the girl back, okay?” Chungha says, one hand on her suitcase and the other on her backpack strap. “Don't let go of Doyeon. I could tell you two were special to each other.”  
  
Yeonjung laughs, slapping Chungha's shoulder lightly. “Maybe, maybe not.”  
  
“I mean it. It doesn't hurt to talk to the girl again, you know.”  
  
Yeonjung sighs. The universe is reminding her, bit by bit, that she needs to hold on.  
  
And maybe it doesn't hurt to talk, but it really does when she passes the cheer team's practices, like a lightning rod shaking up her heart when she sees Doyeon in the center, at the front in pep rallies, around campus, looking effortless and flawless as the day they met.  
  
It hurts when Sejeong and Jieqiong tell her how Doyeon's been doing, that she should just stop being a wuss and tell the girl how she feels. It's a breakup minus the relationship part, and she didn't know it could even feel just this terrible.  
  
  
  
  
It's the day before the end of the semester, a muggy June day before they end up saying anything to each other. And it's like deja vu, except she does remember something like this.  
  
Yeonjung is moving out for the summer, and she's got mostly everything packed up, except for a lone cardboard box she'd designated as _Clothes 2_ gone rogue somewhere. So she's walking the path across campus late at night, texting Sejeong.  
  
_23:04_  
_1 min ago: uyj_s: have you seen it?_  
  
_just now: ksej: Nope looked in rooms + bathroom already, not in there_  
  
_just now: uyj_s: tried under the beds?_  
  
_just now: ksej: You'll find it soon anyways hehe_

 

Yeonjung sighs, taking out her earbuds and locking her phone, but as she does, she collides with someone, checking shoulders. She rights herself, looking at who it is.  
  
Doyeon.  
  
And the girl's carrying a box.  
  
“She- oh she sent _you_ ,” Yeonjung stammers, not sure if she should kiss Doyeon or blow up at Sejeong first.  
  
“Um, yeah, Sejeong told me it was something important. She told me to pick this up,” the taller girl says, gripping the box by the handles on either side, “and that I should find you.” Yeonjung just stares at her in disbelief, putting the pieces together as her resolve crumbles at the same time.  
  
They walk in silence for a minute, neither of them really being sure of what to say. Doyeon makes the first move.  
  
“Ditching me like that? Not cool,” Doyeon says. “Hurts my ego, you know.” She pouts, and Yeonjung can't help but to smile for real, for the first time in god knows how long.  
  
But this time, Yeonjung picks up on what her words actually mean. The other girl seems lighthearted, but she knows that being cut off really does hurt Doyeon more than she lets on, more than what she lets other people know.  
  
She musters the courage to try and tell her properly this time.  
  
“I'm sorry,” Yeonjung starts, slowly. “I didn't know what was going on with us. I freaked out, fucked up and it was all my fault. I'm dumb enough to not know when I'm being like that.”  
  
“It's- it's not all you,” Doyeon says, putting the box down once they're inside the hallway. “Ugh, just, _god_ I hated being like that. Feeling, like, obligated. Don't say you love me unless you really do, or want to date me because you feel like you have to. I don't care – really I don't give a shit what those tattoos on our shoulders mean if we have to go through all of that again.”  
  
“I don't care either,” Yeonjung whispers, and it's something she can't deny. It's a shot in the dark, all things considered, but Doyeon is special to her, always has been. She's the face that stands out in the crowd of Yeonjung's life, the starting spark. Her home.  
  
“But you're right.”  
  
Doyeon seeks out Yeonjung's hand with her own. It's rough and her fingers are long and slim, and they're cold and wrap around Yeonjung's hand oddly. It's strange, strange and reassuring at the same time. She feels something in her heart, her bandaged, tentative heart, thumping at a foreign pace, and she's sure Doyeon feels it too.  
  
They haven't figured it out yet, but this – it isn't quite heaven, and it's not hell either. It's uncharted territory, and if nothing else, it's a start.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! this was a wild ride written over the course of a few months with some crackhead ideas thrown in there. doyeonjung is one of my fave ships.
> 
> twt: @cosmicfiavor


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